Thank goodness for granite. If not for the formation and subsequent erosion of large quantities of metal-rich granite on a supercontinent that formed billions of years ago, the evolution of multicellular life—including us—could have been stifled or delayed, according to a new study. For much of its history, life on Earth existed as only single-celled…
In his Brainstorm blog, Michael Ruse weighs in on the firestorm Robert Wright set off in his recent piece for The Atlantic: Robert Wright, the well-known journalist and author, has just suggested that the so-called New Atheists – people like Richard Dawkins who sneer and laugh at religion, thinking it a great evil and that science,…
It’s a tantalizing find in a Biblical mystery — Oxford University researchers have concluded that a set of skeletal remains which many Bulgarians attribute to John the Baptist probably belonged to a first century male from the Middle East. While that doesn’t prove that the bones belonged to the man revered by Christians as the…
The morphology of coelacanths has not fundamentally changed since the Devonian age, that is, for about 400 million years. Nevertheless, these animals known as living fossils are able to genetically adapt to their environment. This is described by Dr. Kathrin Lampert from the RUB’s Department of Animal Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity along with colleagues from…
In a vacuum-sealed flask on a lab bench in Germany sits an emerald-green crystal that will cause some jaws to drop. The crystal is the first stable compound containing a triple chemical bond between two boron atoms, a feat that had previously been limited to only two other non-metal elements – carbon and nitrogen. Boron…
NASA’s hunting season has just begun, as the U.S. space agency launched its Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) spacecraft into orbit on a quest for black holes. Less than an hour after being flung out of the Earth’s atmosphere, the advanced telescope was reportedly safely on its intended course and already prepping for its two-year…
European cave paintings are older than previously thought, raising the possibility that Neanderthals rather than Homo sapiens were the earliest painters. That’s not yet certain: The paintings may have been made by humans at an unexpectedly early date, which would itself raise intriguing questions, though none so tantalizing as Neanderthal painters. Researchers measured the ages…
Peer far enough back in the human family lineage, and you’ll find a fishy ancestor that looked surprisingly like a shark. In fact, this now-extinct fish was among the first to split from sharks, whose bones are made of cartilage, to evolve into a line of tough-boned species that includes everything from bony fish to…
Small, rocky planets can coalesce around a wide variety of stars, suggesting that Earth-like alien worlds may have formed early and often throughout our Milky Way galaxy’s history, a new study reveals. Astronomers had previously noticed that huge, Jupiter-like exoplanets tend to be found around stars with high concentrations of so-called “metals” — elements heavier…
Ulindi, a female bonobo at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany, has had her genome sequenced, researchers reported, making bonobos the last of the great apes to have their genomes mapped. The resulting genetic code may help unlock the secrets that separate humans — physically, intellectually and behaviorally — from our closest primate relatives. Bonobos are…